The Church as an enabling factor in our dysfunctional red communites. My Sunday sermon.
I posted most of the comments below to a thread that discussed the Falwell-Evangelical pool boy connection. I think there is more that we'll discover about the $20 a night hostel that is tied to this arrangement. But, meanwhile, I wanted to share my own thoughts, about churches. Or more specifically, how I began to see churches in a different light. Different from the way I understood their purpose when I lived in a third world country where good deeds and obligations were simple to understand.
It was just one sermon in a new church that woke me up. A neighbor invited me to her church, where her husband was the pastor. We had some serious problems in our Association where neighbors had committed fraud and conspiracy. We were just beginning to see how it was tied to other misbehavior in the larger community. At the service, the pastor talked about an accident where a man killed a two year old child. DUI, I believe. I thought the sermon was going to be about the pain of losing a child, and how you come back from such a tragedy. But it was all about how that pastor reached out to that man and how the man "turned" his life around by speaking about his experience to others. The pastor stated that the speeches were redeeming to the man.
Sitting in the pew, I'm thinking to myself, this pastor seems to be way too interested in reaching out to someone who was responsible for destroying a family's life, than I feel comfortable with. There is just no balance in this sermon. I didn't even remember hearing the pastor state that the speeches might prevent someone else from committing the same mistake. It was all about making the sinner whole again from the sinner's perspective.
That's when my radar was activated. I had all these thoughts in my head that morning, trying to make sense to why it was that it never seemed that we could dig out from all the intrigue and deceit that was habitual in our community. But when I heard that sermon, one moving piece of a puzzle connected with another and an idea was formed. I began to realize that churches in America may have a different outlook and purpose than the churches where I grew up.
If you think about it, a church must operate as a business. There are bills to be paid. What could be more profitable to a church than to pull in people with deep pockets, who are seeking redemption? Think about the role that church would play in a community. People who have made transgressions against other community members can seek out the pastors, show them that they are remorseful and want absolution. They probably provide a huge donation to the church. Or, they have political power to make things happen that would be difficult otherwise. They can facilitate life, in other words.
The pastor in turn, who may know the wronged individual(s), turns into a broker. But, it's not like he's going to reach out to the victim and share information which is "blessed" by confidentiality. Instead, he does what churches in right-wing communities have done for the better part of two centuries. He teaches the victim to accept and forgive. He tells the victim that we can't know everything, but we need to forgive in order to free ourselves from a burden that was put on our shoulders by others.
I'm guessing that's why we didn't hear him talk about what happened to the family who lost the child. Chances are, they would have thrown him out of the house if he had reached out to them with that angle.
Anyways, telling people who live in these communities that they will find peace by turning the other cheek is the biggest crock of shit ever told. It simply will not work in a community where there are two societies running parallel of each other, and one society just habitually shits on the other.
Can you ever imagine a worse misuse of authority? If my guess is right, churches just add to the dysfunctional societies we have to deal with in red communities.
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I grew up in the 60's with the Vietnam War protests, the activist priests like the Berrigan brothers, etc. What's happening today is so far from those times that I hesitate to even mention it.
All I can say is that if I were ever sitting in a church listening to a sermon where the pastor tells me how to vote or which political party should be in charge, I would get up and walk out. Even if the minister happened to be liberal and happened to be saying things I agreed with, I would still walk out. But you know, chances are he would not be liberal because libs don't act like that.
I think your point is that most times the minister's talking points are way more subtle, but self-serving nonetheless. People who listen week after week are slowly conditioned to accepting the nonsense which is totally against the standard Christian teaching and philosophy. Since you were a visitor and hearing it for the first time, you weren't brainwashed yet, so it jumped out at you. My guess is that the family who lost the child had already quit the church and the pastor was free to say anything he wanted about the incident.
A lot of these small town regular church-goers will never quit, they just slowly become brainwashed.
